Revising Heart of Darkness
The following is a typed version of Conrad’s manuscript of Heart of Darkness. Note the revisions Conrad
made as he was drafting. Then compare this version to the final draft that appears in published form in
the edition we’ve been reading.
I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still [phrase crossed out—unclear]
<stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible> cry <, by the cry of>
inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. “I knew it—I was sure!” She
knew! She was sure. It seemed to me the house would collapse. The heavens
would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for
such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz
justice. He wanted only justice.
Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It
would have been too dark too dark It would have been too dark if I had
spoken.
Been too dark—too dark altogether.
He was silent <Marlow ceased and sat in the pose of a meditating Buddha.>
Nobody moved for a time. “We have lost the first of the ebb” said the
Director suddenly. I looked around. The offing was barred by a black cloud
bank of clouds and the old waterway tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost
ends of the earth flowing sombre under an overcast sky seemed to lead into the
heart of an immense darkness.
Ford Madox Ford was a fellow writer who frequently collaborated with Conrad. Before the publication
of Heart of Darkness, Conrad asked Ford for his suggestions for possible revisions to the novel’s last
paragraph. For example, the first two sentences of the final paragraph originally formed their own brief
paragraph. Ford writes,
[W]e tried every possible juxtaposition of those sentences, putting “No one moved for a time” in front
of Marlow’s ceasing; running that sentence up to the end of the last paragraph of speech; cutting it out
altogether—because the first principle of Conrad and myself at that time was that you should never
state a negative. If nobody moves, you do not have to make the statement; just as, if somebody is
silent, you just do not record any speech of his, and leave it at that.
However, that negative statement got itself left in at the end, I suppose as a matter of cadence,
though I remember suggesting the excision of “for a time”—a suggestion that Conrad turned down
because that would have made the statement too abrupt and dramatic. The last paragraph of a story
should have the effect of what musicians call a coda—a passage meditative in tone, suited for letting
the reader or hearer gently down from the tense drama of the story, in which all his senses have been
shut up, into the ordinary workaday world again.
Questions:
1. What changes does Conrad make in the manuscript? What changes does he make from the
manuscript to the final, published form?
2. What effect(s) do these changes have on how the final paragraph is interpreted?
3. What kinds of reasons does Ford Madox Ford give for the changes he and Conrad discussed?
(Manuscript and Ford Madox Ford quotations taken from Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. 2nd ed. Ed.
Robert Kimbrough. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1971. 134-9.)